


a flap of bird wings in the silence

by oisugasuga



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Hogwarts, Angst, Character Death, Ghosts, M/M, Post-Battle of Hogwarts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-13
Updated: 2018-11-13
Packaged: 2019-08-22 23:17:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,133
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16607297
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oisugasuga/pseuds/oisugasuga
Summary: Hogwarts sits quiet and reserved, in mourning, a massive stone beast nestled into green hillsides and edged by the glittering Great Lake and the ink-black Forbidden Forest.Oikawa feels like he should be holding his breath as he treads down the long, arched hall he’s in, should be getting down onto his knees and begging for some kind of forgiveness for the dried blood that is splattered over the front of his t-shirt, for the dead Death Eaters who had stared down the length of Oikawa’s wand before everything went dark.But he continues on, grits his teeth, curves his fingers more firmly around the tabby, wills the darkness that seeps and bleeds from the corners — the darkness that threatens to drown him — away.





	a flap of bird wings in the silence

The screaming never seems to stop.  
  
It lingers, a phantom whisper over desecrated stone walls and charred piles of rock and wood and glass… over ground that’s soaked with blood.  
  
The bodies are gone now — carried inside out of respect and so they can be more easily identified by friends, by family — but the bloodstains remain and the memory of death imbrues every surface — the terrifying, desperate wails of war echo amongst the ruins of a shell of a school and yet the silence is even more deafening.  
  
Oikawa stands alone.  
  
The wind is oddly cold. It shivers over his skin, ruffles his bangs.  
  
He feels… angry? tired? empty?  
  
It’s useless trying to pinpoint just one.  
  
He starts to walk, shoes crunching over debris, over a few broken wands. Someone’s tabby lies motionless a few yards away, its tiny body curled up against a cracked boulder, almost as if it’s sleeping.  
  
Even the animals had fought — had fought tooth and nail — alongside children and teachers, to defend this school. To defend their home.  
  
Oikawa looks away. And then he looks back.  
  
Swallowing past the horrible lump in his throat, ignoring the pain in his knee and the agony from the long, jagged cut that marks one of his forearms — from elbow to wrist — Oikawa steps over a twisted mess of metal, over a blood-stained scrap of clothing, gingerly picks his way over the rubble until he’s reached the cat.  
  
He shrugs off his loose, nylon jacket, spreads it over the hard ground, reaches out and buries his fingers in soft, soft fur.  
  
The tabby is light, as if its bones are hollow, lifts easily into Oikawa’s grasp. He wraps it into his jacket slowly, carefully, fingers still trembling even though the fighting had ceased a while back.  
  
For a moment, after he’s tied the sleeves of his windbreaker together, the cat now shrouded and hidden, Oikawa’s stomach twists. He braces his hands against the cold, wet ground, lets gravel dig into his palms and cut open soft skin, tries not to be sick.  
  
_"Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in. Out."_  
  
The wind blows again, rustling over the broken ground like the rattle of bleach-white bones, stirring up dark ash and whisking it away, high into the turmoiled sky above.  
  
Oikawa turns his gaze to the heavens.  
  
There are questions he has that he suspects no one could ever answer, no matter how hard he pleads.  
  
Finally, when his stomach has eased away from the nausea, when his eyes stop prickling with hot, unshed tears, he scoops his jacket carefully into his arms, cradles the quiet form inside it close to his chest.  
  
_"No one can hurt you anymore,"_ he thinks.  
  
And then Oikawa gets up, walks across a courtyard that never should have seen such horror, and disappears into the graveyard-silent school.  
  
  
  
Inside is just as hushed as the grounds and skies outside.  
  
Hogwarts sits quiet and reserved, in mourning, a massive stone beast nestled into green hillsides and edged by the glittering Great Lake and the ink-black Forbidden Forest.  
  
Oikawa feels like he should be holding his breath as he treads down the long, arched hall he’s in, should be getting down onto his knees and begging for some kind of forgiveness for the dried blood that is splattered over the front of his t-shirt, for the dead Death Eaters who had stared down the length of Oikawa’s wand before everything went dark.  
  
But he continues on, grits his teeth, curves his fingers more firmly around the tabby, wills the darkness that seeps and bleeds from the corners — the darkness that threatens to drown him — away.  
  
At the same time, the memories suffocate him.  
  
Oikawa grew up here. He knows these halls. He’s studied and lived and laughed and cried in every corner of this school, has played Quidditch out on the now blackened Quidditch pitch for countless hours, has slept under this roof and stared at the stars from the Astronomy Tower and eaten with his classmates in the Great Hall.  
  
He can recite the school song by heart, knows where all of the secret passageways lie, could find his way around blind just by memory and touch.  
  
And the recollections… of his first night here, of being Sorted into Slytherin, of meeting Koushi… of his first time catching the Golden Snitch, of the countless holidays he’s spent wandering the halls and reading in the library… of the first time he kissed Koushi up on the astronomy tower and of sleeping curled up together in his tiny dorm bed… of joking with friends out on the sprawling green lawns in the spring and daydreaming during lectures and running down to the Great Lake and wandering out in the Forbidden Forest on a dare and visiting Hogsmeade on crisp fall afternoons and flying in crystal-clear, blue skies and holding Koushi close as he smiled up at him while they danced at the Yule Ball.  
  
Oikawa squeezes his eyes shut, stutters to a stop for a second.  
  
He hurts. He aches almost too much to keep moving, as if someone is breaking his bones, one by one, is crushing his lungs and compressing his heart until it’s almost too much for it to keep beating.  
  
Everything, all of his time here, has been warped somehow by the tragedy he’s witnessed today. It’s like a photograph stained with water, the colors bleeding together, blurry no matter how hard you try to look at it.  
  
_"Keep going,"_ something in his head whispers. _"Koushi needs you."_  
  
Oikawa’s eyes snap open.  
  
He takes a shuddering breath in, ignores the wetness on his cheeks, keeps moving.  
  
  
  
The Great Hall has been transformed into a mausoleum.  
  
The house tables are gone, whisked away to make room for the dead. Even the teachers’ head table has been taken.  
  
White on white on white.  
  
Oikawa pauses in the entrance, cradling a broken, dead cat to his chest, and stares.  
  
The sheets stretch out across the floor like ivory flags of mercy that never came.  
  
Oikawa tries not to look too hard but his eyes are drawn to them. He knows these silent shapes.  
  
These are his friends. These are his teachers and his classmates and his _family_.  
  
Oikawa’s hands shake uncontrollably.  
  
He had seen them outside, had seen pale hands lying stretched out over the ground as if they had been reaching for someone, for _something_ , before their life had been taken from them.  
  
He had seen the blood, the blank, glassy eyes, had heard the screams of the dying and of those alive who had stumbled upon a boyfriend, a girlfriend, a partner, who had found a best friend, who had cradled a sibling close to their chest and had rocked and sobbed for help that was a minute too late.  
  
There’s Yachi Hitoka, the Hufflepuff with the sweetest smile, lying prone on the ground, her blonde hair swept around her still face like a halo. No one will ever see that smile again.  
  
There’s Kuroo Tetsurō, captain of the Gryffindor Quidditch team, a seventh year with a loud mouth and an even louder laugh. Oikawa had always admired him — for his Quidditch talent, but also for his patience as he helped younger students with their homework in the library, spending long hours bent over books and explaining spells.  
  
One of those students, a sixth year named Kozume Kenma, kneels over him on the hard ground now, staring unseeing into the distance, both of their small hands clutched so tightly around one of Kuroo’s blood-stained ones that their knuckles turn white.  
  
Oikawa swallows down the burn of nausea in his throat, tries to hold onto the small body in his arms tighter to ground himself as the room threatens to turn upside down.  
  
He’s already said goodbye twice today. He doesn’t know how much more he can withstand.  
  
Hajime and Makki lie side by side near the front of the hall. Oikawa knows they’re there even though they’re covered by matching sheets. He had held their hands, had cried over them, had screamed and sobbed and cursed everyone and everything three hours ago as Mattsun shook beside him on his knees, silent tears pouring down his face.  
  
They’ve been dead since this morning. They’ve been cold and lifeless, never again to crack a joke, never again to smile or laugh or complain to Oikawa about homework, since the early dawn had bloomed over the blood-stained ground in clouds of cerise and gold and lavender.  
  
Oikawa will _never_ see his friends again. He’ll never call Hajime "Iwa-chan" again, he’ll never tease Makki for his outrageously dyed hair, he’ll never walk with them down the halls or sleep over at their houses in the summer or see them again once they’ve been buried in soft, dark ground.  
  
Oikawa had been outside to get away from it all, to forget the look on Mattsun’s face when he had told him that Wakatoshi had found them too late, up on the third floor, their hands interlinked between them as they slumped against a wall, wands lying in loosely curled fingers — when he had told him that Wakatoshi had had to carry them down to the Great Hall, had been the one to cry for them first, carrying all of that pain alone until Oikawa had stumbled across him.  
  
Of all things, the one thing that had broken something irreparable deep in Oikawa’s chest had been the soft smiles on their sleeping faces.  
  
Oikawa’s knees threaten to buckle if he stops walking, so he keeps going.  
  
He has to keep going. It’s the only way he’ll survive this.  
  
Something silver sparks in the fading light streaming in through the shattered windows lining the hall, catches Oikawa’s eye from where it burns up on the dais at the end of the room.  
  
He sets the tabby down on an empty space on the floor, fingers lingering against the scratchy nylon, leaves it tucked against a shrouded figure, maybe because he hopes that the person under the sheet is someone who loved it.  
  
And then he’s straightening up again, ignoring the pain that echoes through every piece of him, that unravels like nightshade in his stomach and pushes violet flowers up his throat, choking him.  
  
He moves as fast as he can manage until he reaches the dais.  
  
Koushi’s eyes are as dark as the shadows that linger around Oikawa’s shoulders — velvet fingers and cold nails that trace lines down his spine.  
  
Oikawa closes the gap between them slowly now that he’s here, limps up the few steps until he can stand right in front of Koushi, can look at him and drink in the sight of his star.  
  
Koushi shudders once. Crimson blood is dried in his starlight hair, his lower lip is busted when he looks up at Oikawa, smudges of plum stain the skin under his eyes.  
  
He reaches out a hand towards Oikawa.  
  
Oikawa feels his heart break just a fragment more, one more tiny fissure that shatters the entire thing.  
  
He had tried to forget outside.  
  
He had tried, just like he’s trying now. But the truth is inevitable, reality is cruel and unshakeable.  
  
Oikawa reaches out, lets his fingers drift through Koushi’s translucent ones.  
  
Koushi smiles at him sadly, eyes soft even as they shimmer with tears that will never fall.  
  
Oikawa can’t breathe past the tightness in his chest, can’t think over the noise in his head, can’t keep from crumpling to his knees as all of it — Koushi’s pale skin, his ice-cold touch, the way his entire being wavers between here and there — hits him all over again, sends a despair through him that he doesn’t know if he’ll ever get over, a darkness that will haunt him for the rest of his days.  
  
Koushi drifts down to his knees as well, unable to catch Oikawa as he falls, helpless. Never again will he be able to hold Oikawa when he needs him most.  
  
The same agony that crushes Oikawa’s heart is reflected in his shimmering gold eyes.  
  
"I love you," Koushi whispers. His voice flutters through the air like the flap of bird wings and it’s the same and different at the same time, still sweet even as it echoes with the secrets of the other side.  
  
He frames Oikawa’s face with his hands, careful to not let his frost-tipped fingers burn Oikawa’s skin.  
  
And as they kneel there — the ghost of a boy with star-fire hair and a broken one with nothing to hold — the sun finally breaks through the heavy clouds outside, warmth and light flooding through the broken windows, sparking against all of the ivory in the hall until everything blazes with a shine so bright that Oikawa has to close his eyes against it.

**Author's Note:**

> Umm, so I wrote this awhile ago for an OiSuga week prompt (I think?) and I just stumbled across it again;; (Pls forgive me for the angst)
> 
> Check out some of my happier fics here --> [blog (´๑•_•๑)](http://oisugasuga.tumblr.com/)


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